On Game-Theoretic Network Security Provisioning

Abstract

Service level agreements occasionally come as qualitative claims rather than quantitative statements. Motivated by the well-known fact that different (security) service goals can be conflicting, we present an axiomatic approach to finding an optimal balance between interdependent service quality criteria with distinct performance indicators. As a by-product, we obtain network provisioning strategies that ensure the promised service level at optimized performance. Our results generally apply to any security infrastructure for which attack and provisioning strategy identification is feasible. Standard security audits can thus be exploited twice, because, apart from forming a convincing sales argument, they directly support security service level agreements.